The Hunt for Yesterday
by UltraVioletSoul
Summary: New Year's Eve of 1983. My take on the death of Mason's wife and the reason why he went back to active duty when she died. Excerpt from an ongoing story. Established MasonxOC.


_**A/N:**_

_I had this for a while, and thought I would post it. It's an excerpt of an ongoing story, so maybe it will be hard for readers to keep up at points since there's some missing information. If you're interested in reading it, you can look it up on Lunaescence by the title of In Your Eyes. It's a reader insert, though, so I don't know how many of you will like it the strange point of view. _

_I still hope you enjoy this one._

_This is historical information, borrowed from Wikipedia, Crime and Investigation, History of War, and other sources. Characters are heavily based on Illich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, and Magdalena Kopp. That is right; the similarities are not coincidence. However, since the Black Ops series always include real-life characters, I thought Carlos the Jackal and his wife were worth being included in this story, even with names changed._

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**Disclaimer:**

I do not own Call of Duty Black Ops or its characters; they all belong to Activision and Treyarch. No copyright infringement intended. I'm only trying to provide entertainment for the readers and by no means do I have lucrative purposes.

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Marseille was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and oldest cities in France. As the capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur— one of the seventy-seven regions of France— it had been part of the earlier papal territory of Avignon; the French Riviera and the former province of Dauphiné. It also was the capital of the Bouches-du-Rhône department, one of the eighty-three original departments created during the French Revolution in 1790. As such, Marseille was the second largest city in France after Paris. Founded in 600 BC, under the Greek name of Massalia, it was the largest and oldest commercial port in the country, which had turned the city into a major center for trade and industry throughout the years. Its beauty was a mixture of modern and pristine– even after its reconstruction once the Second War was over– surrounded by crystalline waters in the southeast coast. All through its history it had been considered not only a strategic point for the economy of the region that, after the 1970's oil crisis, had found new grounds to redevelop with funds subsidized by the European Union, but also the pearl of the Mediterranean Sea.

And for good reason.

With old and stylish buildings of long-lasting architecture; shiny beaches with aquamarine shades sparkling under the sun and lovely natural sights that would be worthy of seeing for a last time, its attractiveness proved to be the ultimate temptation for tourists who frequently ended up enchanted by its history, culture and beauty.

This green-eyed Vietnam veteran was no exception.

Mason could not deny he had been captivated by its wonder, even in winter time, and often joked that his wife must have had a hard time living and growing in such a breathtaking paradise. Compared to his harsh upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska, hers had been far from the discomforts of a freezing endless winter that stung the skin and had forced him to focus his efforts on enduring the white storms. Those snow storms that she barely survived the first winter she spent with him.

Now that she brought him here, he wanted to indulge his sight a little more and make plans to spend his next summer in a comfortable resort with her and his kids. Maybe sipping some cold Pastaga cocktail, sunbathing, or going for a dip in the aquamarine waters of the Mediterranean. He wanted to spend the rest of autumn and winter of his life with her, by his side, admiring the newfound beauty of the world in her eyes. _Damn_. Alex had to admit it; he was growing softer as years passed, all because of her, but he could not help it. However, he would only show this side of himself with her, and her eyes were the only witnesses of the new man he had become.

With a subtle smile on his lips, he immediately decided the idea appealed to him. He was going to take long, really long vacations this time– and good ones. Why the hell not? He had saved more than enough money during his time working for Uncle Sam. Naturally, the payment was good and a strong incentive if the special operatives were to put their asses in the line, willing to do what others could not in hotspots that nobody would ever want to be. Of course, numbers were not official and so were their paychecks– at least the ones they got for the accomplishment of black operations– since they were not supposed to exist.

Even after the whole predicament Operation Charybdis had supposed to be, his reserves had been returned to him intact and he had been allowed to retire after the "clearing of the misunderstanding" that had come about. Despite being considered a cowboy by his superiors, they figured they could make good use of him in the future. Either that, or they found a new way to harness him with his woman and his child, advising it would be better off if he went into an "amnesic state"– as The Company had put it– for the sake of his family.

If there was one downside of his love for the female that had somehow earned a place in his heart, and one had never foreseen, it was that she made him painfully vulnerable. It was good to have her with him, but sometimes it was not easy to put his guilty mind at ease.

AFTER a quick phone call to her Mother, they left the hotel and hit the streets. The walk to the restaurant was nice and distracting, even under the falling snow that danced like white sparks and rested on the top of their heads. It was not that cold– at least, by Mason's standards– but being aware of his adeptness to below zero temperatures, Mason knew better than not to place his arm around her to share body heat. Or maybe it was just an excuse to be close to her. Pressing her against his body, he heard her giggle before they reached the first corner and waited for the traffic lights to change to green. Meanwhile, the couple happily chatted about plans for the coming days, Alex gazing down at her with a half-smile as she caressed the top of her pregnant belly.

"Are you okay?" He asked for what she thought was the umpteenth time, his hand sliding to the small of her back. However, she gave him a genuine smile. His concern was not new to her. Maybe he was just scared that she would go into labor too soon. With a beam and nod of her head, the woman assured him that everything was perfectly fine and that there was nothing to be worried about; little monster here was just hungry, that was all.

Were there reasons to be distressed, honestly?

The restaurant was nice, albeit a little crowded due to the cold weather that unpremeditatedly brought people from the white covered streets. Fortunately, they were led to a table in a nice and quiet corner that was smoke free and ideal for a peaceful meal, and private talk.

They settled on a smooth and creamy Bisque soup of strained broth of crustaceans. It tasted wonderful and, as a succulent starter, had managed to satiate part of her craving appetite. The main course was Coq au Vin, a tasty stew of chicken braised in Burgundy wine, lardoons, onions, carrots, mushroom and garlic, with traditional seasonings. Needless to say it was a delicacy and that they happily nibbled at every bite in a merry chat. Alex could not complain, on his part. The evening was perfect; the day had been perfect and they were so close to welcome the New Year– one more year with them; with his family. The wait was growing shorter and, hopefully, in a three-month's time their second child would be brought to the world.

Plans for the future of his kids were sketched in his mind. Fears and doubts came to life while his wife smiled at him, oblivious of the thoughts crossing his mind. Would he still be here? Would he live to see their children depart home to live life on their own? He mentally shook his head trying to get rid of those unwanted and uninvited contemplations. No need to be pessimistic, he decided with a faint scowl which he hoped she failed to notice.

But there was this bad feeling growing stronger as the seconds ticked by, and he could not figure out what it was for the life of his.

"Alex? Alex?" He had not realized he had been spacing out. Why was he spacing out in the first place? "Are you okay?" This time it was she the one who looked concerned. He saw it in the way she bit her lips, as though she wanted to say something but was hesitating to do so.

"Yes. Of course, honey." Trying to drop the subject, he tried to make some small talk and shoot the breeze. However, she was not buying his attempts to conceal the indistinct shade of unease in his green eyes.

"Did Hudson tell you something that's troubling you?"

His throat went dry, and Mason tried to fix its parchedness by downing a sip of his Pinot Noir wine. It only added to the thirst that seemed to take over him, and he tried to douse it with a cool stream of water.

Jason Hudson had dropped by their house a week ago. The woman had been surprised to be faced by him when she opened the front door. His lips had been drawn in a straight line and his cold but sincere blue eyes had looked at her, without being concealed by the screen of polarized sunglasses. With a brief greeting, she ushered him to the warmness of her dwelling, and offered some coffee after hanging his black coat.

It was quite curious to have him once more before her. Hudson had not liked her very much, back when they met, but she understood his reasons had been nothing personal. She had been mostly a burden to them, and it had been unthinkable for her to follow these men further on their journey. If anything, she had to thank him for drawing the line and tell her that her partaking had come to an end. She did not believe she would have made it alive if she had kept immersing herself into this mess, regardless of how emotionally involved she had become with Alex.

"I reckon you're here to see Alex." The smile she gave him was honest and welcoming. Why would she feel resentment towards him after so many years? Those days were gone, after all. Life had given Alex and her a new chance. They were together now, and she was happy with him. They had an adorable kid and were about to welcome their second bundle of joy.

"I apologize for my unexpected visit, but I was in town by chance and I thought it'd be nice to go see some old friends." For a visit to old friends, he sure did look a bit uptight. She felt it; something was not right.

"Who is it?" The woman looked up to see Alex, with David slung over his shoulder as though he were a sack of potatoes. The kid did not seem to mind, since he was uncontrollably giggling and kicking and she had to stifle a small laughter of her own. However, the jovial expression on her husband's face quickly faded as soon as he spotted Hudson standing next to her, in the sitting room, and she had to wonder what exactly was going on. Mason did not look angry; he did not look quite happy, either. Still, there was this perpetual frown on his face that confirmed her early suspicions.

The next thing she knew, Mason was handing David to her and the two men rapidly walked to a secluded study room without as much as a word.

HUDSON had aged. His hair had greyed and his head was balding. However, the sight of the receding hairline had not been as shocking as Mason thought it would be given that Jason had always used a shaven-head style, even before the days in 'Nam. If he were to see Hudson every day, he would hardly notice the passing on years save for the wrinkles on his face.

Well, it was no use making such a big fuss about it. That was the game of life, and people always lost to it whether they were rich or poor; good or bad. Some even were not lucky to stand a chance and cheat Death, and they died young. Alex had to count himself lucky that, at least, he could see himself growing old. Many of his comrades had been killed in action and did not have the opportunity to see their skin wrinkling or eyes fading; to see their kids having kids– or even have children of their own.

He accepted he was not a young man anymore, and he wished he would be left alone to catch up with the wonderful things in life he had missed. In spite of this, Hudson was here and there could only be one reason. A reason he was sure he was not going to like in the slightest.

The earlier conversation they had attempted to initiate had been interrupted by a knock on the door. It had been the woman, bringing a tray of hot coffee, milk, and other pastries. Mason did not feel like eating at the moment, but he did not want to be rude with her. She had bothered to prepare something and it would be outright crude to slam the door in her face just like nothing. Trying to smile, he miserably failed at that while taking the tray in his hands. He looked in her eyes for a few seconds and, with an encouraging smile, she closed the door and walked down the hall leaving him to his business with their unexpected guest.

"I know this came off as unexpected, Mason. But the circumstances left me with no other choice but to turn to you this time." The blue-eyed man sipped his black coffee, and so tried Alex who found it difficult to down the hot drink. "I'm aware that you had an early retirement, and it's unusual to ask a former field-operative to—"

"Would you please get to the point, Hudson?" He wanted for this to be done, and fast. Jason could be an amazingly eloquent man, and very persuasive with his words, but Alex was not one of those who liked listening to long rhetorical talking. Cue sign, the sigh of his companion who placed the cup on its plate and his leather case on his lap.

It was not long before a manila folder was placed in front of him, the swishy sound it made as it slid along the surface of the desk unnerving him beyond belief. Arching an eyebrow, Mason took it in his hands and opened it. The first thing he came across was a detailed file on a brown-eyed middle-aged man. He recognized him, undoubtedly. The man was Carlos Rodriguez, a Venezuelan committed Marxist-Leninist regarded as one of the most famous political terrorists of the 70s. He had played an active role in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP was a revolutionary leftist organization, founded in 1967, which had pioneered armed aircraft hijackings— in the late '60s and early '70s— and opposed negotiations with the Israeli government, favoring a one-state solution to the Israeli—Palestinian conflict. Its tacit KGB support did not go unnoticed and that was why it represented a significant threat, or so they high-ups in Washington said.

Rodriguez had joined the youth movement of the Communist Party at a very young age and became involved in various subversive activities against the ruling government of Rómulo Betancourt. By the time he was seventeen, Carlos had shown considerable potential by being involved with his country's revolutionary cause. After attending the Tricontinental Conference in Havana— a meeting of leftist delegates from several countries around the world— with his Father, a fanatic Marxist successful lawyer, he was sent to be trained in the Cuban camp Mantanzas near Havana, studying Guerrilla warfare and sabotage techniques as well as bomb and weapon skills thanks to his KGB trainers.

His parents then divorced, and he was sent to Kensington to attend a Tutorial College in the United Kingdom, in where he developed a taste for the playboy lifestyle, mixing at embassy parties and making contacts which would serve him well in his future career. It was a glamorous standard of living, short-lived when his Father decided that his son was to enroll in the Patrice Lumumba University, in Moscow, which was said to be a notorious hotbed for recruiting foreign communists to the Soviet Union. Soon, Carlos rebelled against the harsh discipline he encountered there but a generous allowance, courtesy of his wealthy Father, enabled him to recreate his playboy lifestyle full of cocktail parties and women. But at a price; this rebellion cost him his membership of the Venezuelan Communist Party in 1969— which had been sponsoring his studies in Moscow— and he was expelled after supporting a rebel group fallen out of favor. Later, in 1970, Rodriguez was expelled from the University due to his participation in an Arab student demonstration– a protest that was seen as anti-Soviet.

This marked the beginning of his long involvement with the Arab terrorism. While still at the University, he had met a number of Palestinian students who had been determined to gain an independent state, even if that meant international terrorism.

Rodriguez took off to Beirut, Lebanon, where he volunteered for the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, the second largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization— the largest being Fatah— in 1970. He was sent to a training camp for foreign volunteers of the PFLP on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan. On completing an extensive guerrilla training, Carlos played an active role for the PFLP in the north of Jordan during the Black September conflict— under the leadership of Yasser Arafat— and gained a remarkable reputation as a fighter. However, the organization was pushed out of Jordan when the Jordanian armed forces initiated their campaign to expel the forces of PLO out of the country, and Carlos found himself returning to Beirut.

In 1971 he was back in London, mixing with high society while covertly gathering information on who was worthy assassinating or kidnapping. On December 1973, he was ordered to give a message to the Jewish community in London as retaliation for the assassination of a high-ranking member of the PFLP by the Israeli secret service. As a result, the president of a British multinational retailer was shot in his own house; a nearly fatal act which had been preceded by a grenade attack on the London headquarters of an Israeli bank, and a car bomb in Paris.

In 1975, he led the six-person team that attacked the meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries leaders, in Austria. They took more than sixty hostages and killed three; an Austrian policeman; an Iraqi OPEC employee and a member of the Libyan delegation. Carlos demanded that the Austrian authorities read a communiqué about the Palestinian cause on Austrian radio and television networks every two hours. To avoid the threatened execution of a hostage every fifteen minutes, the Austrian government agreed and the communiqué was broadcast, as demanded, getting the massive attention of the world media. After the deed was done, Carlos and his gang escaped on plane and released the hostages on Algeria after a ransom— estimated at between US$20 and US$50 millions— was paid.

This earned him the wrath of the PFLP for not sticking to the original plan. The stratagem had been to ransom most of the ministers for the cash the PFLP desperately needed, but to murder the ministers representing Saudi Arabia and Iran, because those two countries had been insufficiently dedicated to the Palestinian cause and to the cause of higher oil prices.

In this state of affairs, Carlos was forced out of the PFLP by its leader, Wadi Haddad, shortly after the OPEC kidnapping because he ransomed the Saudi and Iranian ministers instead of killing them, and because he was suspected of keeping part of the ransom for himself.

By this point, Carlos had become a freelance terrorist, gathering extremists from various European and Arab countries to his Organization of Arab Armed Struggle, composed mostly of Syrian, Lebanese, and German rebels. However, little did this organization had to do with Arab struggle and everything to do with his economic interests. His operations were mostly carried out in Eastern Europe, but he also traveled on diplomatic passports helpfully provided by various Arab nations, such as Syria and South Yemen. The Soviet satellites mostly tolerated his presence, maybe fearing repercussions if they turned him away, but they did little to actively help him. An exception was Romania, whose secret police hired him to kill Romanian dissidents in France and to blow up the Radio Free Europe offices in Munich.

His campaign of terror was becoming unbearable, it seemed.

"Are you expecting me to say _when do I kill him_?" Mason unceremoniously tossed the file at the table, and sternly glanced at his fellow.

"We believe he's planning his next move, Mason. The Mossad is asking for our help. Two of their best agents were following a lead on him but were killed before they had the chance to report anything to Tel Aviv. Whatever it is, it must have been pretty serious. His wife has been taken into custody by the French police after having been caught in a car with explosives, in Paris."

"His wife?"

"Kathrin Faber; a German photographer member of the Frankfurt Revolutionary Cells. She was caught with five kilos of Penthrit, as well as false passports and other incriminating documents, including sketch plans of various locations that had been targeted for attacks. So far she hasn't told the DST a thing. She's a tough one, might I add. Meanwhile, Carlos has intimated the French government into releasing her, or to face the consequences."

"Is our National Security at stake?" At Jason's silence Mason could not help but glare. In all honesty, he had no intended to stare at the man in this way. It was not his fault. He was just doing his job, like everyone else. Still, that did not mean Alex had to be happy about fact that they wanted him back in the game for a reason that did not even have to do with homeland defense. "Then you don't have any business to do here, Hudson. Go find another for the job. I'm pretty sure there must be someone who's younger and eager to make a name for himself."

"That's the problem. They don't want just anyone to get his hands dirty." Alex had to control the urge to snort at that. Just for how long did he have to keep them dirty for the sake of their satisfaction? "They want _you_ and Woods. He says he's not going unless you do and, knowing him as I do, he won't move his ass out of Philadelphia."

"And I won't move mine, either. My duty is with the United States, not Israel or France. It was clearly stated, that I was to hit the field if and _only_ if the national security was concerned, or by my own accord. None of those are the case."

"Mason—"

"I won't. Find another Joe in the SAD. I don't think Woods and I are the only ones working for it, are we? Let those kids have all the action they want."

"None of them are as experienced as you two are."

"It's a good opportunity for them to get weathered." He was not going to let him win this discussion. Not this time; not again.

"Just think what a mind like his is capable of scheming. He's a cold blooded murder, and has been hit where it hurts the most. Who knows what he's capable of doing just to free his wife-"

"And I'm determined not to leave mine!" Mason all but cried getting up from his chair, eager to get out of there. Hudson kept his cool, and stared at him with eyes of ice.

"I understand your concern, but you're needed now. Our duty goes always goes before the family; you know it very well."

"No, Hudson. This ain't the call of duty; this is the chance to remove a thorn in the Western and French authorities' asses. But I'm not gonna be the pair of tweezers to pull it out. It's already settled. You asked me to give up on _her_ once, and I listened to you. But that's not happening again."

_Not now; not ever._

LOOKING at her, now, he tried to convince himself that he had done the right thing. There was no need to thrust unnecessary affliction upon his wife. It would not do any good to her and the baby they expected.

"Don't worry. It's nothing." Mason assured, placing his hand on hers as they gazed at one another, oblivious to the rest of the world in the restaurant. "Really, honey. Let's not talk about this, alright?"

With a dubious nod, she licked her lips and they got back to their meal and merry chat, trying not to think too much about the unfavorable days to come lest they called doom upon themselves.


End file.
